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Hopefully this is a simple question for old Mac users, but I am new to MacOS Sonoma 14.5 and using Thunderbird 128.1.1

I am struggling to get rid of a pretty ugly font that appears on some websites (e.g. arxiv.org, see below). The same ugly font also appears in some of my emails when I view them on Thunderbird (I suppose that without format), this font is different to the one the Mail app uses and also different than the one Thunderbird for Windows uses.

I have been changing the font options on Thunderbird, so far with no success. On the other hand, I have not even found font options on Safari.

Is there a guide or tool so I can select something more to my liking?

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    What version of macOS and Thunderbird are your chosen ones? The help for that app has a lot of people that share your sensibility, so hopefully some are here with advice, too.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Aug 28 at 20:10
  • I'm using Sonoma 14.5 and Thunderbird 128.1.1. What's funny is that the font on the arXiv is different on my iPhone also using Safari... .
    – Minkowski
    Commented Aug 28 at 20:21
  • I would probably try finding something in font book you like and editing in you want that look and if you don’t care which browser you use or why adding that face to thunderbird isn’t working if no one answers in a day or so.
    – bmike ♦
    Commented Aug 28 at 20:31

2 Answers 2

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Caveats: I am not an expert on this - so happy to delete when there is a better answer. I have only addressed font issues in Safari - not Thunderbird.

Font in your arXiv example is Lucida Grande. This is specified in the web page where there is a CSS which includes:

body {
  margin: 0;
  padding: 0;
  background-color: #fff;
  color: #000;
  font-family: 'Lucida Grande', helvetica, arial, verdana, sans-serif;
}

This choice has been made by the web designer who, I assume, considers it appropriate. As well as aesthetics, there would be a requirement to use a widely available font.

The same font is displayed on both my iPhone and Mac - the page looks identical apart from layout difference due to screen size.

Edit: The paragraph above is wrong - see the comment from @AVelj. The font on the iPhone is Helvetica. Similar to Lucida Grande, but, for example, the descender on the letter y is obviously different.

You can, if you really want to, modify the look of a web page. For Safari, here are two methods:

  1. Glenn Fleishman describes how to use a custom CSS to change web page look.

  2. A Safari extension Web Font Changer - FontFlex. I have briefly used this. It is certainly powerful, but there is a danger of making web pages less readable.

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  • I wonder where you see that the web designer chose Lucida Grande as default font, because I cannot see any instance of "font" or "Lucida" in the sourcode of arxiv.org (I feel that the font choice is done by my MacBook). Also, as I mentioned before, a different font appears on my iPhone, not sure why you have the same one displayed there. Any case, thanks for pointing me to the CSS (never heard of it). Writing one single line in a stylesheet did the job. The safari extension unluckily needs the premium version to change the font.
    – Minkowski
    Commented Aug 29 at 15:05
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    I quickly did a web inspection on both iOS 17.5.1 and macOS 11. It appears that the font used on that website is Lucida Grande on macOS, but uses Helvetica on iOS. This explains why the fonts are different on the two systems. I'm unsure how @Gilby sees identical fonts typographically (i.e not via web inspection), however, given the small font sizes on iPhones, anyone could easily mistake the subtle differences between the two humanist sans-serif fonts. Also remember that pre-2014, Lucida Grande was the default system font used on Mac OS X before it changed to Helvetica Neue and now SF.
    – AVelj
    Commented Aug 29 at 16:30
  • Additionally, whilst Apple's Human Design Guidelines recommends using SF, it is possible to use other system fonts easily or manually import non-system fonts into app development via XCode. Note that Lucida Grande is not a system installed font in iOS (but it is downloadable), which might explain why @Gilby sees identical fonts, (if say, one of their installed iOS apps has downloaded & uses Lucida Grande). Furthermore, given the longstanding usage from 1999-2014 in Mac OS X, some developers (i.e. Mozilla) may have stuck with Lucida Grande as their default UI font or even preferring it over SF.
    – AVelj
    Commented Aug 29 at 17:28
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    @Minkowski To see the web source (including its style sheets): 1) Safari Settings > Advanced tab > Enable "show feature for web developers" (at the bottom). 2) From Develop menu, choose "Show web inspector". 3) "Sources" tab shows arXiv.css, the default style sheet for the web page. Alternatively copy and paste some text into Pages - it will be Lucida Grande.
    – Gilby
    Commented Aug 29 at 23:39
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    @AVelj You are both right, my font critical skills are obviously not as good as I thought! When I look carefully I can see differences - the descender on the letter y shows a clear difference between the iPhone and Mac.
    – Gilby
    Commented Aug 29 at 23:47
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The issue on Safari has been already addressed by Gilby above. I'd like to share how I fixed it on Thunderbird in case this is helpful for someone else.

Settings -> General -> Config Editor

Then I looked up "font" and changed all the places where "Lucida Grande" appeared for your favourite font. This is certainly to crack a nut with a sledgehammer, but it did the trick.

Edit. If someone knows which of the many options I changed is actually the one which did the job, please speak up.

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